Ely Air Lines: June 5, 2018 Mostar's Tower of Hope

The Liberty Gazette

June 5, 2018

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: Toys came from weapons for children of the basements. After each round of bloodshed, exploded artillery created pieces in interesting shapes. Rubble from bombed or shot-up buildings added variety to the newly-fallen toy box.

Rockets and grenades came from the top of the hill, blowing up neighborhoods.

Formerly a very nice hotel.

“We’d wait fifteen seconds and then we’d all run outside and grab as much as we could. We used our imagination, playing with shrapnel and debris. Our games were collecting as many different pieces as we could, then comparing, and trading for more cool-looking pieces. But we all grew up together doing that—we were Muslim, Roman Catholic, and Orthodox. Although we were of different religions, we got along just fine. Together, living in our basements, we faced attacks by Serbs and Croats.”

Those are the words of Admir, who served as our guide through Mostar, Bosnia. The closest he came to identifying himself with any particular religion was when he said, “My mother gave me a Muslim name.”

I knew the integrated city of Mostar, the most heavily bombed in the Bosnian war, would be an interesting study in humanity. What I came to see was a building that the government “discourages” people from visiting. It’s fenced off pretty well, stories of people falling and dying are spread probably to create fear, but access is only a slight challenge if you know where to get in.

Near the front lines—a four-lane boulevard—the National Bank of Yugoslavia had been hit by mortars and rockets shot by the invaders who surrounded the city from the mountain tops all around. The 1990’s war in Bosnia was complicated. In Mostar, the Neretva River divides the city; Muslims on the east side, Croats west. The ten-story bank, only its concrete structure remaining, became the ideal location for Croat and Serb snipers to shoot citizens. They picked off ordinary residents walking along the sidewalk below or perhaps stepping out on their patio to hang the laundry to dry. The building became known as Sniper Tower.

Neretva River, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovenia

Former National Bank of Yugoslavia, a/k/a "Sniper Tower".

Art on the walls of Sniper Tower

Messages in Sniper Tower

Wall on the way to Sniper Tower

It wasn’t the evil of men’s hearts that drew me here. It was the display of art—how people survive and try to heal from atrocities—that made me need to be in this ruin.

Half-way up Sniper Tower

From our research we had learned of the paintings that now cover most of the concrete on every floor. Painted over bullet-ridden walls are portraits of loved ones, messages of peace, statements of pain and searching for hope. A blue painting with white stars declares we all live under the same sky. A painting of several pairs of sunglasses says point-blank that we choose how to see the world, “Pick your glasses.”

Elevator shaft

We explored every floor of the bank-turned-weapon on the way to the roof, considering the art that expresses the depths of human searching. Alongside us, Admir added context with his childhood memories, his family among the targets.

I am not convinced that Admir’s dream of peace will come true in this life as we know it, but the yearning for it captures my heart.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

The Old Bridge, Stari Most

Stari Most

Cemetery

At the Crooked Bridge

Powerful Reminder; Notice shrapnel on top of the rock

This boulevard was the front lines of the war.

At the front lines here you can see two monuments. The one on the right is for "Yugoslavians."
Someone has tried to destroy it.

Side by side: a lovely dignitary's house and the former city library, still bombed out rubble. Read on...

The former city library is a mess. They do not wish to rebuild it, according to Admir, our guide, because this is where the intellectuals meet - and it is they who cause all the trouble.